Postdoctoral work @ University of Cambridge

A single electron in a quantum dot is driven by laser light, and made to interact controllably with surrounding nuclei, as a step towards a nuclear quantum memory (Art Credit: Ayna Bogdanova)

The vast computational power promised by controlled quantum systems has motivated arrays of experimental efforts towards quantum systems engineering. In recent years, solid-state environments have become better controlled as settings for quantum systems, due to a more complete understanding of the complex environments in which information is stored and exchanged. This has opened up a number of possibilities for integrating these technologies in sensing, communication, and quantum computing applications.

I’m interested in proof-of-concept experiments on quantum state engineering of spins and photons with optically-active semiconductor quantum dots. Semiconductor quantum dots are a versatile platform with tremendous potential for scalable integration due to well-established semiconductor fabrication procedures in industry and academia, and due to the relative ease of integration with other components such as typical integrated circuits for electrical operations, or photonic waveguides for optical operations. They offer the current state-of-the-art for single photon generation, and serve as a testbed for various novel approaches to quantum networking. This work is foundational towards the construction of interfaces between stationary and flying quantum bits, as required for the development of a “quantum internet”, where entanglement is distributed between distant nodes.

Coherent manipulation of spins in optically active diamond systems

Group IV vacancy defects in diamond (SiV, SnV, GeV, PbV) are a competitive architecture for spin-photon interfaces, owing to their highly coherent optical interface and excellent spin properties. Achieving these spin properties requires suppressing phonon-induced decoherence by lowering temperature; SiV becomes competitive at 100mK. Our group has very recently shown that SnV, owing to its larger mass and spin-orbit splitting, performs equally well at 3K, bringing this defect center into the forefront with a much simpler cryogenic system. Indeed, operating at this temperature, we showed optically detected magnetic resonance with resolution sufficient to obverse coupling between the Sn defect centre and a proximal carbon nuclear spin.

PhD work @ MIT

Harnessing friction atom-by-atom with trapped ions in an optical lattice

Nanofriction with a chain of trapped ions dragged on an optical lattice (MIT News)

Friction is a rough problem. Plus, some say it’s worth 5% of the GNP (that’s almost $1 trillion)! Yet the microscopic origins of the friction force and dissipation are still poorly understood. As part of my doctoral thesis, my team and I explored the physics of atomic-scale friction using a system of trapped atoms in contact with a standing wave of light, thereby simulating real materials in contact with one another.

Narrower is better

Useful in the context of quantum information science and metrology, narrow linewidth lasers tend to be costly. Here we developed a technique for narrowing the linewidth of a commercial laser by 2 orders of magnitude

Synaptic information transmission (uOttawa, Longtin group)

We simulated synaptic connections between neurons with simplified models accounting for plasticity, and found that for these models the information transmission was broadband, speaking against the intuition that plasticity should act as a filter